Date: 1615

"From the brain, turn the eye of thy mind to the gates of the Sun, and Windows of the soul, I mean the eyes, and there behold the brightness of the glittering Crystal, the purity and neat cleanness of the watery and glassy humors, the delicate and fine texture of the Tunicles, and the wonderfull ...

— Crooke, Helkiah (1576-1648)

Date: 1622

"In darkness you may see him, that's in absence, / Which is the greatest darkness falls on love; / Yet is he best discernèd then / With intellectual eyesight."

— Middleton, Thomas ( 1580-1627); Rowley, William (1585-1626)

Date: 1641

"I am not that structure of limbs which is called a human body. I am not even some thin vapour which permeates the limbs - a wind, fire, air, breath, or whatever I depict in my imagination; for these are things which I have supposed to be nothing."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1641

"And whenever my preconceived belief in the supreme power of God comes to mind, I cannot but admit that it would be easy for him, if he so desired, to bring it about that I go wrong even in those matters which I think I see utterly clearly with my mind's eye."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1641

"Now if we are to become aware of something, it is necessary for the thing to act on the cognitive faculty by transmitting its semblance to the faculty or by informing the faculty with its semblance. Hence it seems clear that the faculty itself, not being outside itself, cannot transmit a semblan...

— Gassendi, Pierre (1592-1655)

Date: 1644, 1647

A 'clear' perception is analogous to an object "present to the eye's gaze" that "stimulates it with a sufficient degree of strength and accessibility"

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1649

"I see it a bad exchange to wound a mans owne Conscience, thereby to salve State sores; to calme the stormes of popular discontents, by stirring up a tempest in a mans owne bosome."

— Charles I (1600-1649); Gauden, John (1605-1662)

Date: 1651, 1668

"Sometimes also in the merely civil government, there be more than one soul: as when the power of levying money, (which is the nutritive faculty,) has depended on a general assembly; the power of conduct and command, (which is the motive faculty,) on one man; and the power of making laws, (which ...

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

Date: 1651, 1668

"For as in this disease, there is an unnatural spirit, or wind in the head that obstructeth the roots of the nerves, and moving them violently, taketh away the motion which naturally they should have from the power of the soul in the brain, and thereby causeth violent, and irregular motions (whic...

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

Date: 1652

"But the publishing and manifestation of this Law which must give notice of all this, does flow from that heavenly beame which God has darted into the soul of man; from 'the Candle of the Lord', which God has lighted up for the discovery of his owne Lawes; from that intellectual eye which God has...

— Culverwell, Nathanael (bap. 1619, d. 1651)